322 



TABLE-TALK A1\D VARIETIES. 



feared the archbishop would cut off 

 their ears. 



STATUES TO GREAT MEN. 



I may be askt by the studious, 

 the contemplative, the pacifick, 

 whether I would assign a higher 

 station to any publick man than to 

 a Milton and a Newton. My an- 

 swer is plainly and loudly, Yes. 

 But the higher station should be in 

 streets, in squares, in houses of 

 parliament ; s'uch are their places : 

 our vestibules and our libraries are 

 best adorned by poets, philosophers, 

 and philanthropists. There is a 

 feeling which street-walking and 

 publick-meeting men improperly 

 call loyalty ; a feeling intemperate 

 and intolerant, smelling of dinner 

 and wine and toasts, which swell 

 their stomachs and their voices at 

 the sound of certain names rever- 

 berated by the newspaper press. 

 As little do they know about the 

 proprietary of these names as pot- 

 wallopers know about the candi- 

 dates at a borough election, and are 

 just as vociferous and violent. A 

 few days ago I received a most 

 courteous invitation to be named on 

 a committee for erecting a statue 

 to Jenner. It was impossible for 

 me to decline it ; and equally was 

 it impossible to abstain from the 

 observations which I am now about 

 to state. I recommended that the 

 statue should be placed before a 

 public hospital, expressfng my sense 

 of impropriety in confounding so 

 great a benefactor of mankind, in 

 any street or square or avenue, with 

 the Dismemberer of America and 

 his worthless sons. Nor would I 

 willingly see him among the worn- 

 out steam-engines of parliamentary 

 debates. The noblest parliamen- 

 tary men who had nothing to dis- 

 tribute, not being ministers, are 

 without statues. The illustrious 

 Burke, the wisest, excepting Bacon, 

 who at any time sat within the 

 people's house; Eomilly, the sin- 



cerest patriot of his day; Huskisson, 

 the most intelligent in commercial 

 affairs; have none. Peel is become 

 popular, not by his incomparable 

 merits, but by his untimely death, 

 Shall we never see the day when 

 Oliver and "William mount the 

 chargers of Charles and George ; 

 and when a royal swindler is super- 

 seded by the purest and most exalted 

 of our heroes, Blake? (Walter 

 Savage Landor.) 



CLASSICAL SPOTS IN LONDON. 



In Cannon Street we had the 

 good fortune to stumble accidentally 

 on the oldest existing memorial of 

 ancient London, and which, pro- 

 bably, as the Londoners are said to- 

 know less of their own city than 

 visitors, few of the multitudes 

 passing it daily and hourly ever ob- 

 serve. It is the famous London 

 Stone, which has been carefully pre- 

 served from age to age. It is found 

 mentioned by this name in a record 

 so early as the time of Ethelstan,king 

 of the "West Saxons. What was ita 

 original use does not appear. It is 

 generally conjectured to have been 

 erected by the Romans, and is be- 

 lieved to have marked the centre 

 of the city burnt by Boadicea, and, 

 like the miliarium aureum, the 

 gold en pillar in the Forum at Rome, 

 to have been the point where all 

 the ways met, and relatively to 

 which their distances were mea- 

 sured by the Romans. At an early 

 period the street where it is situated 

 formed the centre of the ancient 

 city, and appears to have been the 

 place where proclamations were 

 made to the citizens. Thus it is re- 

 lated in the English Chronicles 

 that "When Jack Cade, the Kent- 

 ish rebel, anno 1450, in Henry VI.'s 

 time, who feigned himself the Lord 

 Mortimer, came through South- 

 wark into London, he marched to 

 London Stone, amidst a great con- 

 fluence of people, and the lord 

 mayor among the rest; he struck 



